iOS 5 GM question.

Heres the deal,
off to the apple store in the morning to get my mother and father in law an iPad 2 each. They want me to set it up for both of them as they live abroad and are old and unconfident.

Do you think I should update their OS to GM 5?
I know they won't update virtually anything after they have left as its too complicated for them. Does the latest GM 5 released for today have an expiry date like the previous betas? .... I am hoping if they have this installed then they can get OTA updates and not need to sync it to any computers.

Obviously had they been here a little longer then I would have waited to download the non developer GM and sent them on their way .... However they are only here for another 36 hours and I don't know whats best to do for them.

Heres the deal,
off to the apple store in the morning to get my mother and father in law an iPad 2 each. They want me to set it up for both of them as they live abroad and are old and unconfident.

Click to expand...

I'd stay with the existing software.

Are there Apple stores in the country where your parents live? Apple offers a Personal Setup session; I'd guess their local store would be willing to set them up if they bought their iPads in another Apple Store.

If not, are there other computer stores selling iPads where your folks live? Stores like that would be an obvious second choice. They might be willing to help your parents upgrade for a small fee.

Download the GM and the correct iTunes and do it. It will give them a much better initial impression to have ios5, plus they can message you using iMessage, immediately if you set it up for them, so you can always be on the other end, should they need any help with anything. Much better if you give them iPads with a nice Welcome message and easy steps to get set up instead of the pain of iTunes for them. Let us know what you do! I am buying my parents an iPad and will definitely put GM on it for them as they are not too savvy about updating software and syncing etc.

Does anyone think that if I installed the developer GM, it will need a full tethered restore later on via iTunes when the public GM or other updates are released? I am hoping for an over the air update for them so they can be PC free. But also secretly know that if I send them on their way with iOS 4 they will never update it since its not OTA.

I would not put a beta, even a supposedly GM, version of any s/w on anyone's device. It's not that infrequent that even GMs are tweaked before release, sometimes for major security bugs or power issues. Plus iCloud is likely to get reset again before next Wed's official release.

What I would do is just hold off shipping the iPads to them until iOS5 ships. Then load the official release and set it up for auto syncing so they can do over the air updates from then out and never have to hook it up to a computer.

Does anyone think that if I installed the developer GM, it will need a full tethered restore later on via iTunes when the public GM or other updates are released? I am hoping for an over the air update for them so they can be PC free. But also secretly know that if I send them on their way with iOS 4 they will never update it since its not OTA.

Click to expand...

It's anyone's guess since this is the first OTA version of iOS and Apple hasn't commented on how dev versions will get updated to the release version (assuming there is a difference). Usually iTunes will see the GM as the official release and will not update until the next patch. If you want the official version you have to do a full restore.

In the past a GM has also been updated before release. If that happens the dev build may not get updates, who knows? Plus, yes, iCloud resets, who knows what else will happen before launch. You'd be giving them a semi-beta OS, it *might* go really well, or they *might* have a really bad first week with lost data, things that go wrong, followed by a trip to you to get the final OS installed.

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